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2020 President · MT

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-31 (3 days before the election) · 920 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 50%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.55% · Republican 56.92%

R+16.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 50 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.550 − 56.919 = -16.369
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-16.369) = 11.369
  4. Absolute miss = |11.369| = 11.369

The poll overstated the Democrat by 11.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72762, race ID 6237 (538 database).